#147 From Five Failed Bar Exams to a Thriving Career Teaching Lawyers

Angeli Raven Fitch failed the California bar exam five times before finally passing on her sixth attempt—collapsing on a sidewalk in tears when she saw the results. That resilience now fuels a career spanning criminal defense, AI ethics education, competitive storytelling, and caregiving for her mother with advanced dementia. In this episode of Lawyers Who Learn, host David Schnurman, CEO of Lawline, sits down with Angeli to trace the thread running through her many careers—attorney, faculty member, voice actor, children's book author—and finds it comes down to one thing: authentic self-expression. That instinct shows up in her legal work, where as co-founder of the Three Strikes Justice Center she's helped free clients serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses, once putting a vulnerable client on the stand against expert advice and watching the judge visibly soften. It shows up again on stage, where she's won storytelling competitions drawing on an acting background that taught her to live inside a story rather than recite it. Fitch also teaches Lawline courses on AI ethics, warning that lawyers who ignore confidentiality and competence rules are courting real risk. Just as striking is her reflection on caring for her mother, who no longer recognizes her: rather than grieve the parent she lost, Fitch has learned to join her mother's world, finding unexpected joy there. This conversation offers a model for embracing failure as fuel, treating storytelling as a skill, and approaching AI's ethical demands with curiosity rather than fear.